Editorial: A sorry state of affairs at State

In this Oct. 18, 2011, photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton works from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya. ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Hillary Clinton left John Kerry a mess at the State Department. And we're not referring to the still-unanswered questions about Benghazi, but to a CBS News report Monday suggesting that Mrs. Clinton's State Department covered up allegations of "illegal and inappropriate behavior" within its ranks.

CBS based its report on a memo leaked to its news department, which was authored by the State Department's Office of Inspector General. The previously secret document includes a number of bombshells for which Mr. Kerry, the current secretary of state, and Mrs. Clinton, who resigned the post Feb. 1, owe the American people explanations.

That includes the revelation that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards. Also, the allegation that members of Mrs. Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips to foreign countries," a practice the OIG memo described as "endemic."

Equally troubling was the revelation by the OIG that an "underground drug ring" was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and that it actually supplied State Department contractors with drugs.

Aurelia Fedenisn, a 26-year veteran of the Diplomatic Security Service, which protects the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors and which also investigates any cases of State Department misconduct, told CBS News she and other DSS agents uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing that "never became cases."

"This is going to kill us," she recalls a State Department official telling her and other investigators when presented with their findings. The investigators expected some pressure to scrub their findings, Ms. Fedenisn said, but "the degree to which that influence existed, and how high up it went, was very disturbing."

Ms. Fedenisn's accusations were echoed by Mike Pohelitz, a retired DSS senior agent involved in one of the cases detailed in the OIG memo. Mr. Pohelitz said he was told to stop investigating the case in question. The order was transmitted by his bosses at DSS, he told CBS News. "But it had to come from somebody higher than DS (Diplomatic Security), I'm sure," he said.

Indeed, in one case cited by the OIG memo, a stand-down order was given to DSS agents investigating a U.S. ambassador appointed to a sensitive diplomatic post who "routinely ditched his protective security detail" so that he could steal away to public parks, where he solicited prostitutes.

The ambassador eventually was summoned to Washington, D.C., where he met with Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management. Mr. Kennedy allowed the decidedly indiscreet ambassador to return to his foreign post, according to CBS News.

Ms. Fedenisn, who is now a whistleblower, said she suspects that "hostile intelligence services" were aware of the U.S. ambassador's illicit liaisons. "So, yes," she said, it presented "a serious risk to the United States government."

Taken together, the revelations suggest a culture of corruption at the highest-ranking Cabinet department.

The issues at State demand nothing less than a full-scale congressional inquiry.

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